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by Federico García Lorca, translation by Langston Hughes, directed by Soheil Parsa

Modern Times Stage Company and Aluna Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto

March 11-29, 2015;

March 7-19, 2017

Mother: “To live is to fight”

   

Modern Times Stage Company and Aluna Theatre have combined forces to create a powerful vision of Blood Wedding (1933) by Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca (1898-1936).  American critics like to point to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) as a turning point in drama for choosing an ordinary man as its tragic hero.  In reality that project had begun as early as the 18th century with the rise of “bourgeois tragedy” of which Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Emilia Galotti (1772) is a prime example.  Lorca’s play is one of a series of peasant tragedies including Yerma (1934) and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936) that demonstrate that tragedy hearkening back to ancient models can strike a class even lower that the middle class of Miller’s play.  The great virtue of director Soheil Parsa’s production is that all elements of the theatre – the sets, costumes, lighting, sound, movement – contribute in almost equal measure to the impact of the text, which becomes only one component among many.  

Though Lorca’s rural tragedies are imbued with imagery of the Spanish countryside and its conservative values, Parsa has taken the view that to be effective a tragedy must also partake of the universal as well as the particular.  In accordance with this Parsa has deliberately assembled a cast representing Toronto’s diverse ethnic makeup.  This is a simple but effective way of saying that a great tragedy may originate in one country but resonate in many, and indeed a story about a passion that flouts conventional rules of society will have analogues everywhere.

Trevor Schwellnus has designed a completely modern set without any national references.  It has a slanting back wall of semi-transparant glass held in place by a metal grid, with three similar wings on either side of the same appearance.  The set itself suggests a society of many layers as well as a world where people can always be seen and have no real privacy.  Schwellnus’ lighting design is highly imaginative.  He can flood the whole stage in light or pick out individuals in spotlights.  Change of location of the play’s seven scenes is entirely due to his changes of lighting. 

The collaborative work of the creative team helps create Lorca’s world of half prose, half poetry – half reality half dream – that determines the characters’ actions and mocks any notion of free will.  When the Mother (Beatriz Pizano) remains her Son (Derek Kwan) how his father and his brother both died at the hands of men of the ironically named Felix family and we learn that the Son’s intended Bride (Bahareh Yaraghi) was once the girlfriend of the only remaining Felix son Leonardo (Carlos Gonzalez-Vio), the structure of the tragedy has already been established.  We as the audience, or the onstage chorus of wedding guests, can only observe how the tragedy plays itself out. 

The sound of horses’ hooves that haunts the Mother’s dreams, also haunts those of the Bride’s Servant (Jani Lauzon) and Leonardo’s Wife (Sochi Friend).  Both know that this sound is not part of a nightmare, but real.  Leonardo has been riding every night to look in at the Bride’s window.  Though married and with a child, he has still not gotten over his love for the Bride.  As we discover through her nervousness, neither has the Bride gotten over her passion for Leonardo.  Indeed, one of the reasons she has accepted the Son’s proposal is to tie herself in marriage to a good man to exorcise Leonardo’s power over her. 

Though the principals are all very strong, the supporting cast is uneven, especially in communicating the text clearly.  Beatriz Pizano is wonderful as a woman who foresees doom but has fortified herself to endure it.  If her husband and older son are dead, she sees it as her duty to become their living memorial.  Derek Kwan is well-spoken as the Son, naturally optimistic and one who believes, incorrectly, that the past is in the past. 

As Leonardo, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio is the Son’s polar opposite.  He is tortured with the knowledge that his desires are wrong, yet, literally and symbolically, can’t deny them free rein.  Whereas Kwan casts a light to brighten the play’s atmosphere of gloom, Gonzalez-Vio thoroughly partakes of the gloom and radiates danger whenever he appears.

Bahareh Yaraghi is excellent as the Bride.  She conveys an inner turmoil from when she first appears.  We assume as do her parents that this is just the nervousness of a bride, but Yaraghi makes clear enough that the Bride is struggling with far greater concerns, ones that will end in her death or exile from society.  Yaraghi masterfully plays the scene near the end where she tries to make sense of her conflicting desires – the one to be good and to conform, the other please her innermost self. 

The characters who does not seem to fit in are the Mother’s Neighbour and the Bride’s Servant as played by Jani Lauzon.  Since Lauzon does nothing to distinguish the two, one assumed throughout that they two were meant to be the same person.  In her exaggerated manner of playing, Parsa seems at times to try to inject some comedy into the fraught atmosphere of the play.  At times it seems Lorca intends this, but since Lauzon delivers all her lines in the same fashion, quite often her comic emphasis seems unintentionally to cut across the mood.  This also makes it difficult for her character to be taken seriously at the very end.

Otherwise, this production is an insightful engagement with a classic text that makes the issues Lorca’s characters struggle with palpably real.  The magical staging will hold you spellbound from beginning to end and will leave you eager to see the same team take on the other two of Lorca’s rural tragedies.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Steven Bush, Beatriz Pizano, Sebastian Marziali, Jani Lauzon, Bahareh Yaraghi, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, Liz Peterson, Derek Kwan and Mina James; Beatriz Pizano and Derek Kwan; Sochi Fried as the Moon and Liz Peterson as Death. ©2015 Brian Damude.

For tickets, visit http://buddiesinbadtimes.com.